M A Baby elected as General Secretary of CPI(M) at Madurai Party Congress

Chennai/New Delhi: CPI(M) on Sunday elected senior leader MA Baby as the new General Secretary at its 24th Party Congress in Madurai and inducted eight new faces in the Polit Bureau in place of Left veterans Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat and Manik Sarkar among others, marking a generational change in the Left party.

Baby’s name was cleared by the five-day Party Congress, which ended on Sunday, after the 84-member newly elected Central Committee chose him as the successor of Sitaram Yechury, who passed away last September due to ill-health. Prakash Karat was acting as coordinator of the Polit Bureau since then.

Baby entered the world of politics through Kerala Students Federation, the predecessor of the SFI during his school days. He was a Rajya Sabha MP from 1986 to 1998. He has been in the PB since 2012 and is the second leader from Kerala to become the General Secretary after EMS Namboodiripad. 

The new Polit Bureau has 18 members, one more than the existing one, with eight new faces. Besides the Karats and Sarkar, the others who exited the PB owing to crossing 75 years are Suryakanta Mishra, Subashini Ali, Srinivasa Rao and G Ramakrishna. Yechury’s place was not filled after his death.

The new Polit Bureau has 18 members, one more than the existing one, with eight new faces. Besides the Karats and Ali, the others who exited the PB owing to crossing 75 years are Suryakanta Mishra, Subashini Ali, Srinivasa Rao and G Ramakrishna. Yechury’s place was not filled after his death.

The only person to get an exemption on the 75-year-age bar is Pinarayi Vijayan (79) as he is Kerala Chief Minister. The new inductees include Kisan Sabha General Secretary Vijoo Krishnan, AIDWA General Secretary Mariam Dhawale, Lok Sabha MP Amra Ram, Arun Kumar and U Vasuki.

The 85-member Central Committee, which has one vacancy, has 30 new members and 17 of them are women while the PB has two women. The party also relaxed the age limit to allow P K  Sreemathy and Yousuf Tarigami in the Central Committee, which has inducted young leaders like Meenakshi Mukherjee.

Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat, Sarkar and Subhashini Ali will now be Special invitees in the Central Committee along with S Ramachandran Pillai, Biman Basu and Hannan Mollah, who had exited PB in 2022. Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas, Sudhanva Deshpande, Bal Singh and Sudeep Dutta have been made Permanent Invitees to the Central Committee.

All eyes were on who will be the new General Secretary. Besides Baby, there were discussions about elevating Polit Bureau member and Kisan Sabha president Ashok Dhawale and senior leader BV Raghavulu. West Bengal Secretary Mohd Salim was also being considered. However, sources indicated that 11 of the 16 PB members of the CPI-M preferred Baby for the role.

However, the leadership decided to pick 70-year-old Baby, a former Rajya Sabha MP, against 72-year-Dhawale, who was the main organiser of the iconic 'Long March' of peasants in Maharashtra during the second term of Narendra Modi government. Age factor appeared to have gone against Dhawale as he may not get a second term three years later as he would be crossing 75 years.

A section had backed 78-year-old Brinda Karat while some others had put their weight behind former Manipur Chief Minister Sarkar. However, the party decided not to give age exemptions to any of these leaders.

Baby’s appointment comes just a year before Kerala, the only state where Communists are ruling in the country, and West Bengal, where they were the most dominant force just 15 years ago, go to crucial assembly polls in 2026. 

His main task, apart from preparing the party units in Kerala and West Bengal for the elections, will be to bring several factions of the party together to ensure smooth coordination.

(With inputs from ETB Sivapriyan)